“I think they’re totally overreacting, if you ask me,” Indie says. “So what if she didn’t take the bus after all? I still think she jumped at a chance for a new job to get out of this hellhole.”

“Daphne,” Lexie calls out from the car. “I don’t think Haden’s doing so well.”

Dax and I exchange a worried look.

“Um … carsick,” I say to Indie.

“Yuck. I’m out, then. I’m supposed to finish watering plants before I can lock up.”

She goes back in the shop, and Dax and Tobin help me get Haden into the house. He’s grown very cold; his fingers and lips look blue. We settle him on the couch and I pile blankets from the linen closet on top of him. Each one smells like a piece of home to me.

Brim curls up in a ball on top of Haden’s chest and starts purring. My mom always claimed that the frequency of a cat’s purr has restorative properties that can help a person heal more quickly. At the moment, I hope she’s right.

“This place is … quaint,” Lexie says, coming through the door, followed by Garrick and Joe. Garrick plants himself at the kitchen table, looking as forlorn as possible. Joe lingers in the doorway, like he’s not sure he’s welcome here. “You guys have running water, right?” Lexie asks.

“Yes,” I say. “But if you’re looking for a bathroom, you’ll have to trudge to the outhouse in the backyard.”

Lexie looks like she’s about to faint in horror.

“I’m kidding. The bathroom is upstairs, second door on the left.”

“Oh good,” she says, but from the bewildered sound of her voice, I’m sure she thinks that a house with only one bathroom is almost as archaic as one with an outhouse.

She makes her way up the stairs, with Tobin trailing behind her. Garrick lays his head on the kitchen table. Joe clears his throat from the doorway.

“You can come in, Joe,” I say, but I don’t look him in the eye as he enters the house.

He starts to approach me as if my invitation to join us had meant more than that. “Daphne, I …,” he starts to say, but I hold my hand up to stop him.

“Don’t, Joe,” I say, barely able to keep my anger in check. “I don’t want to hear any more of your apologies right now. I don’t have the energy. I don’t know if I ever will.”

“Daph, please.” He holds his hands out in front of him.

“I forgive you, Joe, for what you did. But that doesn’t mean I can forget.” I know that Joe hadn’t intended on trading me personally to the Underrealm when he made that deal, but knowing that he would give up the idea of me for fame and fortune still stung like hell. It sucks knowing your father would have chosen to make it so you never existed in order for him to become a rock star. “Now respect me when I say I don’t want to talk about it.”

Joe nods and slinks to the kitchen table, where he sits across from Garrick. Both of them bury their heads in their arms.

Dax opens the fridge and asks if he can make a taco for a snack with the meat and tortillas he finds in a couple of Tupperware tubs.

I nod my approval and I find myself wondering just how long I’ll be stuck in this house with all of them. It’s not like they can all stay in hiding forever.

But where do we even go from here?

How do you combat a race of beings that can control the weather?

Guilt eats at me. This is all my fault. My very existence, apparently, is putting everyone in this house in danger. My instinct is to figure out a way to protect them, but I don’t even know where to start.

The things Sarah said about my origins and my destiny come back to me. She’d called me many things other than just the Cypher. She said I was the Keeper of Orpheus’s Heart and Soul. The Vessel of His Voice. I remember Joe telling me about how Orpheus was such a great musician that he could control the elements with his voice—animals, trees, rocks, and such. Even monsters and gods were not impervious to it. I think about how I was able to calm Brim when she’d gone all beast cat, and how my voice had caused the Keres to go solid enough for Haden to kill it. I’d even been able to use Simon’s persuasive tone against him to weaken his hold on my friends.

Did inheriting Orpheus’s voice mean that I had inherited his supernatural abilities with music, too? Maybe my musical OCD isn’t an impairment at all—maybe it truly is a gift, like I had always thought. Maybe Orpheus had been able to hear the tones and sounds that the world and people around him gave off—and tapping into that was how he used music to control the elements.

Maybe this is why I’ve always felt my voice was meant for bigger things than what Ellis had to offer.

There’s a small potted bonsai tree on the coffee table in front of me. Its serene tone reminds me of Asian meditation music. I’d always thought it had a calming effect. I listen to it for a minute, soaking in its song. Then concentrating all my energy at the little tree, I hum the same tone back. Move, I tell the tree with my thoughts as I hum. Come to me.

Just when I start to think that this whole idea is as cracked as possible, the little bonsai tree—pot and all—lurches forward a good two inches. As if it is actually trying to come to me.

I jump and glance around the room. Nobody else seems to have noticed what I’ve done. What I can do. I decide that, for the moment, it might be best to keep this new development to myself. Until I know how I want to use it.

I start nodding off to the sound of Haden’s rhythmic breathing. It reminds me of sleeping beside him in the hotel. I am about to give in to the slumber that pulls at my mind when Tobin shakes me awake.

“Daphne?” He sticks a framed photo in front of me. It’s one that normally hangs on the wall between the bathroom and my bedroom upstairs. “When was this taken?”

I blink a couple of times and focus on the picture. “Last winter. The town has a Christmas party every year. Jonathan made us all matching elf costumes.”

“Last winter? As in, a year ago?”

The urgent notes coming off him make me sit up—the usual syncopated beat that had attracted me to him has increased in rhythm tenfold.

“What’s going on?”

“This girl,” he says, tapping the glass. “Who is she?”

I look at the photo and see who he’s pointing at. Her untamed red hair curls out wildly from under her elf hat, and she looks so pale compared to the rest of us desert folk in the photo. She could never spend much time in the sun because of her fair complexion. “That’s CeCe Caelum.”